Lightning Strike

by William Kent Krueger

Liam walked slowly across the meadow as the coroner’s car swung around and headed back to Aurora. He dropped the liftgate on his truck, climbed into the bed, and opened a large cargo bin attached to the back of the cab. He pulled out a canvas tarp and returned to his deputies and to what was left of Big John.

  “Help me get this under him, Joe.”

  The dead man’s booted feet hung only six inches above the ground. Liam and Meese slid the tarp beneath the body, arranged it, and Liam said, “Cut the rope, Cy. Where it’s tied around the branch.”

  “I’m not sure I can reach that high. Can’t I just cut it somewhere above the noose?”

  “That’ll leave rope on the branch. I don’t want anything left behind here that will attract ghouls.”

  Borkman shrugged. “You’re the sheriff.”

  A four-foot section of rotting trunk from a fallen pine lay near where the body had hung. The lawmen had already speculated that Big John had dragged it there and used it to reach the branch where the rope was tied, then had taken his fatal step. Borkman mounted the trunk section, reached up on tiptoe, and sawed at the rope with his pocketknife. The body dropped suddenly. It hit the tarp with an odd squishing sound, and fluid oozed onto the canvas around it.

  “Jesus,” Meese said. “Sometimes I hate this job.”

  Liam carefully worked the noose off the man’s neck and laid the rope aside. The two deputies each took a corner of the tarp. Liam pulled the other two corners together and gave the order to lift. They carted the heavy body to the pickup truck and maneuvered it onto the bed. Liam folded the tarp over and secured the ends, so that what remained of the dead man would be completely covered on the ride to the funeral home.

  He closed and latched the liftgate, then stood looking at the sky. The sun was already nearing the western horizon, its rays peach colored and sharply slanted. The meadow lay in the long shadow of the old pines that edged the clearing.

  “I’ll drive the body in,” Liam said. “When you come, bring the rope and the bottles. And before it gets too dark to see, look around for anything else.”

  “Like what?” Borkman said.

  “Anything Big John might have left behind.”

  “You mean like a note?” Meese said. “Seems to me those whiskey bottles say it all. You’ve seen this before, Liam. We all have. Too many times.”

  “Just do it.”

  The two deputies exchanged a glance and Meese said, “Whatever you say, Sheriff.”

  Liam had snapped at them, and now he softened his tone. “His truck’s not here. Check the lakeshore, see if he came by canoe.”

  None of the men moved right away. They stood together, their own shadows long across the wild grass that grew in the meadow around the burnt ruins of the old logging camp.

  “I thought he’d put the booze behind him,” Meese finally said. “I thought he’d dealt with his demons.”

  Liam O’Connor didn’t reply. But he was thinking, and what he thought was this: Do our demons ever go away for good? And he was thinking, No one should have to look at something like this. Especially a kid. And he was thinking, Especially not my kid.

  * * *

  Liam stood on the sidewalk outside his house on Gooseberry Lane. It was dark now. The interior lights shone through the windows, and although they were inviting, he was reluctant to enter. Upstairs, only one room was lit, and that was his son’s bedroom. As he stood looking up, the light died. There was still much to do that day, but first he had to talk to Cork. He wasn’t sure what to say to a boy who’d looked on the kind of horror he’d seen at Lightning Strike.

  Liam O’Connor had fought his way across Europe with the 82nd Airborne Division. He’d seen death and its aftermath in a hundred hideous forms. Although he’d been a grown man then, or thought of himself as such, those disturbing visions still sometimes visited him in the night, and he woke shivering in a sweat. What would it be like for a twelve-year-old boy?

  He mounted the front steps, and at the sound of his boots on the wooden stairs, his wife appeared at the door. She opened the screen and studied him.

  “You look awful,” Colleen said and put her arms around him.

  “How’s Cork?”

  “Quiet.” She stepped back and let her husband into the house. “He’s been upstairs since you left.”

  Dilsey, Liam O’Connor’s mother-in-law, came from the kitchen. She was slender, short in stature, but, as Liam liked to say, “tough as ironwood.” Although she was well into her sixties, her hair was still panther black, and she usually wore it in one long braid that hung down the center of her back. “Did you talk to Big John’s family? His brother?”

  “I went out to the rez and knocked on Oscar’s door, but he didn’t answer. Nobody I spoke with seemed to know where I could find him or any of Big John’s cousins for that matter.”

  “You went out like that, in uniform?” Dilsey said.

  “Official duty.”

  “Did you tell them why you were looking for Oscar?”

  He shook his head. “I didn’t want word spreading until I had a chance to notify someone in the family.”

  Dilsey gave a little eye roll. “No wonder they wouldn’t tell you anything. They probably thought you were going to give Oscar a hard time or arrest him again.”

  “I did get the number for his sister in California, and I’ll call her as soon as I’ve talked to Cork.”

  “When you go back to the rez, I’ll go with you,” Dilsey said. “I’ll knock on doors. They’ll talk to me.”

  The house smelled of meat loaf and Liam realized that despite the unappetizing work of that evening, he was hungry.

  “I’m going up to Cork’s room, then I need something to eat. Still a lot of work ahead tonight.”

  Colleen leaned to him suddenly and kissed him, a response that seemed to come out of nowhere and surprised him.

  “What was that for?”

  “For being a good man in a hard job. I’ll have a plate of meat loaf waiting for you.”

  Upstairs, the door to his son’s bedroom was closed, and Liam gave a gentle knock.

  “Who is it?”

  “It’s Dad. Can I come in?”

  “Yeah.”

  Cork lay on his bed in the dark. The light from the hallway cut a blade across him. Lying peacefully next to the boy was Jackson, the family dog, who raised his head and blinked at the light.

  Liam sat on the bed. “How’re you doing?”

  Cork shrugged. “I keep seeing him.”

  “I know. You will for a while, I’d guess. A hard thing to unsee.”

  Cork looked away, out the window into the dark. “Why?”

  “Because it’s a horrible thing and horrible things stay with us.”

  “I mean why did he do it?”

  “That I don’t know, Cork. Alcohol was involved, so… I don’t know.”

  “He stopped drinking. Henry Meloux cured him.”

  “When you’re an alcoholic, you’re never cured. You’re always in recovery.”

  “You don’t kill yourself just because you’re drunk.”

  “No.”

  “Then why?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Are you going to find out?”

  “I’m not sure there’s any point in that.”

  “People will want answers. His family.”

  “They may be the ones best suited to understanding the why of it. I think it might be best to let them work it out.”

  “Does Billy know?”

  “I have the number for his family in California. I’m going to call them.”

  Jackson jumped off the bed, stretched, shook himself, and trotted out of the room.

  “Have you eaten?” Liam asked.

  “Wasn’t hungry.”

  Liam put a hand on his son’s shoulder. He was a slender boy and Liam felt the bone beneath his palm. “What you saw today, I wish you hadn’t seen. But I can’t help you unsee it. If you want to talk about it, I’ll listen.”

&nbs
p; “Jorge saw it, too.”

  “I’ll talk to him and his mother.”

  His son gave a nod, then turned his face again to the window.

  “I’m going down to have a bite to eat. Want to come?”

  Cork shook his head and lay there, staring out the window.

  Liam O’Connor went to the doorway and stood with the light in the hallway at his back, his shadow falling long and dark across the bed. He wished there were a way to make the grotesque image that his son was seeing disappear from his head. He knew there was no magic to wipe clean the slate of memory. You just learned how to move on.

  CHAPTER 3

  It was Billy Downwind who, four days later, asked Cork to return to Lightning Strike. Cork didn’t want to go, but Billy pretty much insisted. He said he had to see the place where his uncle had died, see exactly where Cork had found him.

  The two boys followed the shoreline of Iron Lake north out of the reservation town of Allouette. It was a three-mile hike through dense woods to the ruins of the burned-down logging camp, which had been abandoned for nearly half a century. Although a tragedy had brought Billy back to the Iron Lake Reservation, Cork was looking forward to this time with him, a chance to catch up with a friend he hadn’t seen in almost two years.

  Billy had been giving him a rundown on Los Angeles, what a different world it was from the rez. So many cars and they all went so fast. Bright lights everywhere that stayed on all night long so you couldn’t see the stars. Showers with hot water. Taco stands on every street corner.

  “Tacos?” Cork said. “What are tacos?”

  “Mexican food,” Billy said. “Spicy meat and cheese in a crunchy shell. You can get burritos and enchiladas, too.”

  “What about movie stars? Did you see any movie stars?”

  Billy stopped and knelt to retie the laces of his Keds. “I think I saw Johnny Weissmuller once on Venice Beach, but he was kinda far away, so I wouldn’t swear.”

  As always, the biting blackflies were a nuisance. “Hurry it up,” Cork said.

  Billy stood and they resumed their journey.

  In the two years his family had been absent from the Iron Lake Reservation, Billy had grown. When he left, he’d been a little shorter than Cork and thinner. He was two inches taller now and his upper body was showing enviable muscle. Cork was still waiting to get his own growth spurt. When he’d turned twelve, his father had promised him this would probably be happening soon, but Cork was still anxiously waiting. His father’s good friend Sam Winter Moon had advised patience; manhood came in its own time, he’d said, and then he’d cautioned that it wasn’t always what it was cracked up to be. And old Henry Meloux, who was a Mide, or healer, and who was known to be wise, had offered, “A bird is not ready to fly until it has all its feathers. I have seen you naked in the sweat lodge, Corcoran O’Connor, and it is clear that all your feathers have not sprouted.” Which had made his father and Sam Winter Moon laugh, but Cork hadn’t found it funny.

  “Does it ever snow?” Cork asked.

  “Up in the mountains, not in the city.”

  “Do you ever go to the mountains?”

  “Naw, Pop’s always too busy.”

  “Do you miss the snow?”

  “About as much as I miss the mosquitoes and blackflies.”

  “I don’t think I could live anyplace that didn’t have snow. What about Disneyland? Been there?”

  “Not yet. Costs an arm and a leg to get in.”

  “But you go to the ocean?”

  “Sometimes. The ocean’s free.”

  “Got any friends?”

  Billy said, “Stop with the questions already.”

  At Spider Creek, a clear run of water through tall reeds, they took off their sneakers and socks and rolled up their pant legs and crossed the stream. A quarter of a mile beyond that, they came to Lightning Strike. Billy walked ahead slowly, as if reverently. When they reached the hearth and chimney, Billy stopped and shoved his hands into the pockets of his old Levi’s. His troubled eyes took in the ruins, then he turned to Cork.

  “Where?” he said.

  Cork knew exactly what he meant, and he pointed toward the lone maple tree near the edge of the clearing. He was relieved when Billy held back from going there.

  Billy closed his eyes, took in a deep breath, and said, “He’s here.”

  “He’s dead, Billy. Walking the Path of Souls.”

  “That’s not what Broomstraw says.” Billy used the nickname given to Elsie Broom by kids on the rez. She was an old woman, exceedingly thin and of a brittle nature, hence the uncomplimentary epithet. “She says he’s been dead more than four days without a ceremony, so his soul doesn’t know how to walk the Path of Souls. She says even if he had a proper ceremony, he still couldn’t walk the path because he took Mass from Father Cam out at the mission.”

  “Lots of Indians take Mass,” Cork said. “You take Mass.”

  “She says none of us will walk the Path of Souls. She told me Uncle John will just hang around the places he hung around when he was alive. Like a ghost.”

  “Broomstraw’s old and crabby. She doesn’t know what she’s talking about.”

  Billy said, “He used to bring me here all the time.”

  “I know. I was with you sometimes.”

  “Remember? He would tell us stories about Grandpa Willis working the camp before the lightning burned it down. We’d lay out sleeping bags, look up at the stars. We saw the Northern Lights a lot.”

  “I remember,” Cork said.

  “Do you remember what he told us they were? The dead, dancing in Gaagige Minawaanigoziwining, the land of everlasting happiness. He should be headed there on the Path of Souls. Instead, he’s stuck in, I don’t know, limbo or someplace.” He turned a full circle, his eyes sweeping slowly over everything and finally settling again on the solitary maple. “Why here?”

  Cork knew what he was asking. Why Big John had chosen this particular spot to end his life, a question Cork couldn’t even begin to answer.

  Billy finally sat down among the rattlesnake ferns, plucked one from the ground, and began idly to pull off the leaves. Cork sat beside him.

  Billy had told him how they’d got the news in California from Cork’s father late at night. His mother had cried until the sun came up. Billy admitted that he’d cried, too.

  The afternoon was still, no birds singing in the trees that walled the clearing on every side. Even the blackflies seemed to be avoiding the area.

  “My uncle told me this place has power. They weren’t supposed to be logging here and that’s why the lightning struck.” Billy took a deep breath. “He was right. I can feel it. And I can feel him. He’s here.”

  Cork felt something, too, but for him it was tied to the image of the hanging body, a horror that still haunted him. At least Billy had been spared that.

  “But he’s not in limbo,” Billy said. “He wants something.”

  Cork scanned the trees, almost expecting to see someone or something step from the shadows. “Wants what?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Cork wasn’t certain if it was the suggestion put into his head by Billy or if it was the residual sense of tragedy that seemed now to permeate the place, but he thought he sensed something, too, something menacing. He was suddenly eager to get out of there. He stood and said, “We should talk to Henry Meloux.”

  Billy didn’t move.

  “Come on,” Cork said. “The Mide will help us. He’ll know what Big John wants.”

  Billy finally stood and followed. When they reached the edge of the trees, Cork paused and turned back for a last look at the burned ruins of a building that, if the Ojibwe were right about this place, should never have been constructed there. A cloud passed over the sun and a darkness swept across the boys. At the very edge of his vision, among the shadows of the tall pines on the far side of the clearing, a much greater darkness suddenly arose, and Cork’s gut balled into a fist of fear. He spun to grab his friend’s arm. �
��Geez, Billy! Look!”

  But when the boys turned back together, the sun had reappeared, and the great darkness was gone.

  “What?” Billy said.

  Cork took a moment to gather himself. “Nothing,” he said. He put his back to Lightning Strike and started walking. “It was nothing.”

  CHAPTER 4

  Law enforcement for the reservation of the Iron Lake Band of Ojibwe was the responsibility of the Tamarack County sheriff. This was due to the passage of Public Law 280 by the U.S. Congress in 1953, which gave sovereign Native people the right to choose the agency that would have jurisdiction in criminal matters. Many reservations had opted to remain with federal law enforcement, which meant the FBI, or with state agencies. The Iron Lake Ojibwe had chosen the Tamarack County Sheriff’s Department. Why, Liam O’Connor couldn’t say. He so often felt helpless and frustrated in the face of their resistance when he tried to do his job.

  He stood in the small cabin that belonged to Big John Manydeeds, not surprised at all by the neatness of the place. Manydeeds, once he’d become sober, had lived in a way he believed was in keeping with the spirit of his real home, which was the vast wilderness that stretched north into Canada. He possessed nothing that wasn’t necessary to his survival and what little he owned he maintained with a respect for its value in his life. The cot was made, the blanket tucked neatly under the thin mattress, which was stuffed with the floss from milkweed. The cooking surface of the cast-iron stove in the center of the cabin was clean. Big John appeared to have swept the floor before heading to Lightning Strike for his final visit. The place smelled a bit musty, but that was because the windows had been closed for some time, and Liam figured his friend had taken a moment to see to that detail as well. It was clear that Big John hadn’t gone to his end thoughtlessly.

  Liam stepped outside and closed the door behind him. There was no lock. Almost no one on the rez locked their doors. Big John’s old Ford pickup was still parked on the narrow lane to the cabin. He turned and looked toward Iron Lake, only a couple of dozen yards from the cabin. Big John had built a small dock where he landed his canoe when he came off the lake. Next to it was a canoe rack, which he’d constructed of birch. At the moment, the canoe wasn’t tied up at the dock, nor was it resting on its gunnels on the rack.